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3rd Book Finished (3/12)

I finished reading another book yesterday: Freshwater Aquariums for Dummies. I don’t know if it classifies as a book, but I guess it is a book but not a novel, so I’ll count it

As some of you may know, I plan on getting African Dwarf Frogs (ADF), so I wanted to read up on keeping and maintaining an aquarium

Turns out it’s not as simple as filling an aquarium with water and dropping in your aquatic pets. That’s what I thought it was like. After all, you always see the classic goldfish in a little, simple bowl. Freshwater Aquariums for Dummies says otherwise

This is my first aquatic pet (we did have a Betta fish, but it was my sister’s and she took care of it – I use the term “took care of it” loosely). Apparently, it’s best to set up the aquarium weeks or months before. In this time, you “cycle the tank”. This is the process of getting good bacteria to grow. You can do this with fish in the tank or fishless. I think fishless is more humane

Reading the part about cycling the tank was like high school chemistry class all over with the exception of understanding it. Without going into detail, it talked about the Nitrogen Cycle, pH, Ammonia, Ammonium, Nitrites and Nitrates

I’m glad I read this book and knowing what I know now, I can’t just drop the ADFs in an un-primed tank. I should give the frogs a fighting chance. They still may die quickly, but at least I know I did the best I can

The book was great and had a lot of useful information (it also had a lot of corny jokes that weren’t funny at all). It was easy to read, especially the cycling the tank part, and was well thought out